Candidate Fraud Stops Here with Etan Bernstein

Stop Hunting Fraud, Start Embedding Trust

In this episode of "HR's Most Dangerous Podcast," hosts Chad Sowash and Joel Cheesman sit down with Etan Bernstein, co-founder of the Velocity Network Foundation, to discuss the absolute dumpster fire that is modern talent acquisition.   

Recruiters are currently drowning in an avalanche of roughly 11,000 automated, AI-generated applications a minute. Between job seekers using AI agents to spam companies on autopilot and shady actors yes, actual North Korean bots ruining the party, the traditional resume is on life support.   

The gang dives into:

• The AI Application Death Spiral

• The Credit Card Solution   

• The "Rooster" in the Room 

• Ghost Jobs & Data Scams

  
  

Can an open, internet-like protocol replace self-reported resume fluff with actual verifiable facts? Tune in to find out if the hiring process can finally be saved, or if we're all doomed to get replaced by a 14-year-old’s AI agent.   

PODCAST TRANSCRIPT

Joel Cheesman (00:24.34)

yeah, it's the podcast your dog sitter warned you about. You may know us as the Chad and Cheese Podcast. I'm your co-host, Joel Cheeseman. Joined as always, Chad Sowash is riding shotgun as we welcome Eton Bernstein to the show. Eaton is the co-founder of the Velocity Network Foundation. Eaton, welcome to HR's Most Dangerous Podcast.

Chad Sowash (00:35.455)

Yep.

There he is.

Etan Bernstein (00:44.792)

Thank you. Thanks, great to be here.

Joel Cheesman (00:48.724)

Good to have you. Good to have you. So a lot of our listeners, viewers, probably aren't familiar with you. Give us the elevator pitch on you, the person, and then we'll get into the business stuff.

Etan Bernstein (00:58.232)

Perfect. So I'm an HR guy, been an H Guard guy for thirty-five years, love the profession. spent many years in large organizations like Intel and Applied Materials, and then moved on to be a consultant working with companies all around the world. And through that really discovered how much friction and fraud there is in the talent acquisition world, which is what caused me to s a few years ago to get some of my friends together and say, let's try to solve this really big, hairy problem together.

I live in Israel, but my work's really been global for my entire life. I have three marvelous children and a wonderful wife.

Chad Sowash (01:31.808)

Yeah, I have a big hairy problem.

Joel Cheesman (01:32.146)

Are the kids still around or they are you an empty nester?

Etan Bernstein (01:36.089)

no close to an emptiness, or last my ba my fourteen year old baby is still around.

Chad Sowash (01:40.661)

Joel Cheesman (01:40.83)

Ch Chad's got tips for the almost empty nesters. So if you need some side notes, just give him a call.

Etan Bernstein (01:43.576)

For the empty nesters.

Chad Sowash (01:45.46)

Yeah. Send them to the school and don't tell where you moved. yeah.

Joel Cheesman (01:50.138)

Ha ha ha.

Etan Bernstein (01:50.158)

Ha ha ha ha.

Chad Sowash (01:54.471)

so friction and fraud. I mean, my big hairy problem is Joel Cheeseman, but everybody else's friction and fraud. I mean, it it it's a it's an AI dumpster fire out there, man. you've been you've been floating through this industry for about 20, 25 years. you've seen the shift from paper to PDFs to LinkedIn, and now this absolute dumpster fire of 11,000 fake applications a minute.

Did you hear that, kids? A minute that recruiters have to have to play around with, or they have to at least try to sift through or try to figure out what's fraud, what's real. is the resume finally dead? Is this what's going to kill the resume? We've been talking about this for years, Eton. Please tell me, God, this is what's going to kill the resume.

Joel Cheesman (02:44.509)

Can we finally blame North Korea for the later resume? That that would be a great story, wouldn't it? Yeah.

Etan Bernstein (02:46.798)

They are a player with this issue, yes. Well, I I I I I hope so, but I think it's gonna be a longer process than that. And I and I don't think it's about the resume being dead or not. I think it's about changing the way we approach this. And I'll what I mean by that is you said, you know, in our generation, and yes, I'm old enough to remember w I started my first applications actually sending even before fax, I actually put a stamp on a letter, and then faxes.

Chad Sowash (02:49.472)

Please

Chad Sowash (03:07.05)

Faxes.

Etan Bernstein (03:12.886)

And then emails with attachments and then a LinkedIn profile, right? And then PDF files, right? We've gone through it's not that the industry is stagnant. The industry's gone through these generations, right? And things have changed. But

But but you know, but what through that process, what's what's really interesting, we still have only self-reported data, right? What's the problem with the CV? It's whatever you it's a marketing document. You write whatever the fuck you want. Sorry for my language. And and and and that was fine, you know, when you you had to invest in writing of this revenue all over again in a cover letter. But now with AI, it's just become impossible. And that's what's really changed this. Self-reported data that had to be verified has always been around, and people exaggerating and lying and and actually.

Chad Sowash (03:37.216)

No.

Chad Sowash (03:46.048)

Mm-hmm.

Etan Bernstein (03:55.835)

being fraudulent has always existed. But the AI challenge has really blown that to all apart. I mean, everything's falling apart, right? In terms of our ability to deal with the slop and shit we're all getting through these processes. And something has to change.

Joel Cheesman (04:11.613)

So who was it that said by twenty twenty eight, one in four candidates will be was that Robert Half that had the one in four by twenty twenty-eight? we obviously know it's a problem from the job seeker. Software's popping up, agents are popping up. Give us the other side of the ledger from your perspective, the employers who are playing a game of whack-a-mole and they're going just as robotic and automated as the job seekers are. So talk about that side of the the table a little bit.

Etan Bernstein (04:37.772)

So so I think it's it's this it's this real bad war to the bottom, right? It's a battle to to who knows what horrible situation where individuals have learned that they have no choice, right? They're using agents not because they all think it's wonderful, but because they know that unless it's a numbers game, unless they're using agents to apply for on their behalf more and more

There they're there of no chance, right? And with the economy being what it is, and with young people have struggling so hard to find jobs anyway, I have nothing to lose by having an agent take my resume, adopt it to every job description, just send it out. Worst comes to worse, I'll say no, but I have nothing to lose. And that's what's causing a lot of this slop. When they say one to four candidates are are fraudulent, I don't think that's even the big problem. The problem is good candidates, real good people who are finding no choice.

But to use tools to try to get their ability out there and present represent themselves. And they don't really check whether an AI is changing some of the information in their resume or exaggerating on their experience or writing a degree that they don't have, because they just want the opportunity to get in front of an employer and represent themselves, right? So I can understand the candidates completely.

Chad Sowash (05:39.679)

Mm-hmm.

Etan Bernstein (05:47.159)

On the other side, you have the employers. What are they going to do? If they're getting 10x the number of resumes they got beforehand and they all look perfect, what choice do they have but to try to use more and more automation and AI to try to shift through that?

But that is creating both sides are losing out of that to a degree that even some of the analysts are saying, maybe we need to go back to face to face in paper. No, of course we don't need to do that, but but there is something fundamentally broken in where we're going right now on this path, which is where we believe that something needs to change.

Joel Cheesman (06:10.899)

Yeah.

Chad Sowash (06:18.73)

Yeah, I I I really think that and again, we we we try to paint this broad brush for a lot of organizations where they shouldn't go back to face to face interviews. In some cases they do. I mean, there are some roles in some organizations that are smaller organizations that might have smaller departments, and that might actually fit very well, especially with their culture. And then you have high scaled organizations that there's no way in hell that a human or their human

departments going to scale fast enough to be able to to to to understand all of this. Now Joel, he talks about Wacamo a lot with regard to literally it's just, it's just what a tech, what tech does, and you're literally just trying to fight the tech with the tech. But your whole thought process, instead of like blacklisting, it's more like whitelisting. It's around trust. and everybody loves the word trust, even though it's dying on the vine for God's sakes.

What does that actually mean in the network? How does velocity and and how does this this whole structure and concept work around trust? What does that even mean?

Etan Bernstein (07:23.342)

So as I mentioned, right now all we're relying on is self-reported information, right? You can write anything you want in your resume. You can put anything you want in your re in your in your res and and as a result of that, an employer, an employer or recruiter needs to look at that, hope that most of it is true, and then throughout the stat the s the sourcing process, the recruiting process, and so on, try to rule out who's lying.

Chad Sowash (07:30.697)

It's bullshit, yes.

Etan Bernstein (07:46.841)

Who's exaggerating and so on, right? So you have to be checking those things. And what a lot of the staffing companies are doing now is embedding a

Try to identify fraud early on in the process. For example, by by adding IDV and identity verification process early on, so that we rule out when it's a bot from North Korea, right? Or do some form of verification, whether the application happened within two seconds, probably a bot filled out the application. Or if if someone you know is inconsistent between their resume and their LinkedIn profile, although AI does consistency great, that's a sign that things are not good. So everyone's looking for fraud signals, but

AI is going to get so much better that you won't even be able to find those very quickly. So what we need to do is instead of looking for fraud signals, we need to embed trust at the source.

Joel Cheesman (08:27.186)

Mm.

Etan Bernstein (08:33.186)

What does that look like? It actually means that I, as an individual, have verifiable information that I can trust from the beginning when I pre-present myself, not everything that'll be in my resume, but the fact that I am a human being and that I'm a citizen and can work in this country, and that I have this education, that I've worked at these companies, that I may have passed these assessments and so on. Real facts.

That are anch that anchor my my CV so that the the employer can rule out that at least these things are true. Then there's always the marketing and exaggeration and storytelling, which will continue to be important, but I don't have to start from scratch. a a really good example to that, Chad, we were talking about that is what the credit card industry has done. So for those of us who remember when we had credit cards with a magnetic with a magnetic strip on them, there was an incredible amount of fraud in the in the credit card industry.

Chad Sowash (09:14.144)

Mm-hmm.

Etan Bernstein (09:23.31)

Right, because it was very easy to pick up the credit card information and reuse it. And then the credit card companies got together and say, Let's solve this with the chip that everyone recognizes on their on their credit card. Right. That's a global standard that has basically limited it builds trust.

Joel Cheesman (09:23.539)

Mm-hmm.

Etan Bernstein (09:39.328)

into the process. There is no way to cheat with a credit card in a physical interaction. There are still web-based problems, but that's really solve fundamentally build trust into the ex the payment system. And that's what we're doing with the the resume basically.

Chad Sowash (09:54.695)

E but Eden, when you talk about that, that was actually burning billions of dollars of own their own cash from the banks, right? So the banks were losing money. And in in the case of HR Tech, vendors actually profit off of all this chaos. there's more useless AI detectors and and extra screening. We've got this indeed creates their own, you know, apply, you know, easy apply, which then

Joel Cheesman (10:13.107)

Clicks and applies. Yep.

Chad Sowash (10:23.294)

Today loads resumes. yeah. yeah. And you're allowed to have more than one resume. So I mean, they're creating the chaos, and that is just more money in their pocket because it makes it harder for them to actually find qualified people, even though they're saying, we want you to find qualified people. So what is going to force this industry, much like the banking industry, to actually feel it in their pocket so they make the change?

Joel Cheesman (10:33.543)

Making more money.

Etan Bernstein (10:48.978)

So I think you're hearing it in every conference you're at, and with every forum you're meeting recruiters, the the employers. The employers are suffering. They're saying, okay, we it's great that we get 10,000 resumes, but we can't do anything with them. Right? and so the the pain is is there. The pain of being able to hire high-quality people quickly and effectively and fairly is is basically not working. And so we're hearing employers everywhere demanding a better system. We have to change this. Yes, there are forces.

Chad Sowash (10:53.728)

Mm-hmm.

Etan Bernstein (11:17.662)

keep going in the direction we're going, but they're also forces to say, enough is enough. This is not working for us. We want to do something different. And that's an environment where innovation comes out, where the the incumbents may not, you know, they may have an interest in keeping the world the way it is, but there are enough people who have an interest in helping make it a better world.

Joel Cheesman (11:37.15)

So your credit card example, although a good one, you know, there there aren't a lot of credit card companies. There's a great amount of disparate systems in employment. We just talked about the job board, the ATS, how many ATSs are there, how many job boards are there? There's just so much so many moving parts in that.

Thoughts on that. And then also, what percent do you think of job seekers really are lying? And what percent are really just saying, Hey, this is a new technology. I can be more efficient. I can apply to more places. They're not necessarily lying, but they are using automation to get into more companies and apply to more jobs. So curious about the disparate question. And then also how many are really lying versus how many are just using the technology and being truthful?

Etan Bernstein (12:29.56)

So I'll start with a with the latter question. I don't have statistics. I don't think anyone ever really, really knows. But but I think a majority of people are just trying to get in, right? And they're using technology. And by the way, I think that a candidate that uses AI to apply is a good indication that they feel comfortable using AI. If I'm an employer, I'm like, I exactly.

Joel Cheesman (12:48.699)

And I think most employers want AI to be used to some degree when in an applicant, yeah.

Etan Bernstein (12:53.002)

I I want to know that this candidate knows how to use an LLM to write a good resume, knews how to use a bot or use an agent to you for to apply for jobs. That's an indication that they live in the the modern world, right? Those are skills that show that that's value. So I think most people who are using these tools are not are not bad players. Okay. I think that they're not sensitive enough to the the fact that many of these tools exaggerate.

They're the tool is built to match the person's resume to the job description. What is the tool promising? Watch the videos of any of the AI agents. They're all promising to pass the initial screening. What does the initial screening do? It compares the resume to the job description and sees whether there's a good match. So the AI tool is basically taking your resume and adopting as much as it can possibly tweak it to try to fit the job description. And individuals are not taking the personal responsibility to understand that in that, it's actually creating.

Joel Cheesman (13:17.512)

Mm-hmm.

Joel Cheesman (13:33.544)

Yeah.

Etan Bernstein (13:47.609)

fraudulent resumes that are not representing them correctly. many times they don't even read them. Some of the A tool AI tools you can see the application for every time and make a decision about it. But most people are putting them on autopilot and just asking them to send out as many resumes as you can. They're not even make taking the effort to try to understand whether there's anything wrong there.

and that's that's where I think most of the there yes, there are North Korean fraudulent and there are bad players that are utilizing these technologies. I'll bet those are very few percentage, and the majority is good people just trying to get jobs.

Joel Cheesman (14:18.395)

Yeah. Is this starting to slow the hiring process? I mean, when chat box, for example, came out, it created such efficiency and speed and people were talking about getting hired in hours versus weeks and and being interviewed instantly. Is the reverse starting to happen? Are we creating so much complexity that it's slowing the process down?

Etan Bernstein (14:36.405)

Absolutely.

Etan Bernstein (14:40.484)

absolutely. And can creating confusion on even how to act. So I'll give you a good example. I would just came back from a conference in Germany. In Germany, many of the public companies, banks, government have to have to review every candidate who meets the job descriptions for good purposes, right? For purposes of ensuring that there's no that the people of different you know ups ethnicities and and and genders and so on are not discriminated against. and historically, the if you published a job for a bank, you'd get seven.

70, 80 applications, 20 of them would pass the job requirements. So you'd have to bring 20 people in to re to interview them. That is something you can handle. Now they're getting 300 or 400 applications because agents are doing it, and 280 of them or 350 of them are passing the job requirements. The companies are like, what do I do now? How do I even start addressing this flood of resumes if I want to be

be compliant to the legal requirements. I really want to give people an equal chance of be able to get through my screening process. I'm I'm s I'm in a I'm I'm stuck. And that's a real problem. It's slowing down these processes.

Chad Sowash (15:50.539)

So a couple of different things. We we talked about we know that there's a problem out there. The biggest issue we've seen over the years has been adoption. We we saw Taleo create a universal resume back in the mid-od, mid, mid to late odds, right? We saw Alliance Q actually had it was a an an association of organizations, huge organizations that shared candidates and validated, verified those candidates. And we also here just recently saw a couple of industry veterans in

Richard and Beverly Collins with CV Wallet, that that that network went down as well. So from an adoption standpoint, we have the the employers and they just haven't adopted yet. But then also, as we talked about with applicant tracking system and job boards, these guys make a killing locking in customers to propriet proprietary modes. And what you're talking about is a more open system where there's one candidate.

Cor I mean one candidate profile, correct? And that verification

Etan Bernstein (16:52.106)

Individual has their pro own owns their profile, correct?

Chad Sowash (16:55.132)

Right. So they have like their their all of their verified work history, their certifications, where they went to school, all of these these different things. It it's owned by them. When that happens, Eaton, I think this has always been a problem. When that happens, all of these companies who are making money off of that candidate and and keeping that candidate profile to themselves, they lose that moat.

So from an adoption standpoint, I can see where employers want to move that way. But from an HR vendor standpoint, how are we going to be able to monetize? Cause that's going to be the real key to get these guys moving. How are we going to be able to show them a new revenue model that helps them get away from this old revenue model where they're making money now?

Etan Bernstein (17:41.967)

I d I don't think that the the ri revenue model even today is just based on the quality of the data. They're making money off giving bad data about b incorrect people just selling it. So I think I think the more more people have verifiable information, the more the industry will adopt processes where a candidate that's more verifiable is worth more. If they're still sourcing, they're still screening, they're still finding the right people. I mean the the industry is not it will change to some degree.

Chad Sowash (17:52.084)

Yeah, garbage. Yeah.

Etan Bernstein (18:10.456)

But it it's not that the only the only source is making up fake data about people, right? The industry is more complicated than that. But but I want

Chad Sowash (18:16.874)

But don't these companies want to to own this though, instead of saying we want to do this in a big because I remember Isom saying they want to create passport. I mean, all of these different companies indeeds trying to do some some version of this, some weak ass version of this. But I mean, it seems like they're all trying to do this. How do you get them together in one room and say, Okay, can't we all just fucking get along? Rodney King this shit, and let's do this.

Etan Bernstein (18:20.396)

Yes. Okay. So

Etan Bernstein (18:43.158)

And that's exactly connected to what Joel was saying about when we have such a s a fragmented ecosystem, it just doesn't work. Right. And it's it goes back to it goes back to the days of the early internet, right? Think about the days of CompuServe and America Online. Everyone had their own small ecosystems. Everyone wanted to control their world. Everyone was like, but I want my I want to monetize the small if you have to bring your friend into my ecosystem, you can only communicate to them. And there's great

information you know they were really thinking what do we do with this world wide web what do we do with this internet should we open up to it or not now clearly the in the same way that the internet created incredible prosperity for everyone including the companies who realize how to take advantage of it right the opportunity for ubiquitous infrastructure for trust will do the same thing it will generate incredible inter opportunities but it you have to stop protecting your moat and think about what an open ecosystem

actually creates for everyone. And I we believe that that creates a great opportunity. That's exactly why we we founded the Velocity Network Foundation the way we did. Instead of every one of these private companies trying to build their own closed ecosystem, what happens if as an industry we build one protocol?

One shared infrastructure, which nobody owns, nobody controls, like the internet, and everyone can use in a way that's a public infrastructure, right? So you can move from one staffing front from another, from one platform to another. You own your data, you share it with whoever you want to share it with, but it's all interoperable. In the same way I can send an email from every email system to any other email system in the world. I don't care if you're on Gmail or on Microsoft or something else, it all works, right? That's because there's a a trusted protocol.

Chad Sowash (20:21.92)

Mm-hmm.

Etan Bernstein (20:25.112)

that everyone adopts. And that's what we hope will really make this to solve Joel's question, really help this work is break down these silos, have everyone join and utilize one open protocol.

Chad Sowash (20:35.658)

Well, and this sounds like like the best of both worlds when you're talking about like AOL. They whitelisted things. And I mean, there was obviously some monetization behind that, but they monetized and you didn't get the whole internet when you were using AOL, right? You got what they whitelisted. It sounds like you guys are trying to whitelist all the verified, trusted sources and you're making it open.

Where before AOL was closed network, but this is an open network, but it's only open for verified trusted sources.

Etan Bernstein (21:07.032)

So we've created an open infrastructure. Think about like the internet. The internet has no application. The internet is TCP/IP and DNS servers, all these technical things that nobody actually sees. What do you see? You see browsers, you see websites, you see applications. Those are not the internet, those are vendors building things on top of a shared protocol.

What Velocity Network provides is the shared protocol that enables anyone who wants to participate. We're not whitey light labeling whitelisting them. We're letting them use a shared protocol. So instead of having a website in America online, you have a website on the World Wide Web, and anyone all around the world can see your website. Instead of being a candidate in one platform, if you want to, you can share your data with any other platform, and it's verifiable to anyone who wants to see that.

Joel Cheesman (21:52.732)

Mm-hmm. I think part of the problem, and Chad mentioned some of the ones that have come and gone and sort of dabbled or dipped their feet in it, is the economies of scale. And I think Velocity Network has that problem as well. And when I look at someone like LinkedIn, to me, that should be where the problem is at least largely solved. A couple billion people are on the network. They partnered with Clear, where you can go in and verify that I'm a human being. Now that could be, hey, I'm a I'm a real person. You're saying,

There's also the issue of am I lying? But i the if I push back and say, Hey, if LinkedIn tackles this and they partner with Clear, like isn't that a big step forward? Or is that am I misguided on that?

Etan Bernstein (22:33.858)

No, no. we've b we've we've we were in touch with LinkedIn, and I believe LinkedIn is the perfect wallet for individuals to hold their data, and they're already maintaining self-reported data. LinkedIn would be in an ideal position to encourage, just like they encourage their users to verify their identity, and now they use intra to verify that you actually work at the employer that you claim, right? You can verify you can't verify your actual title, but you can verify that you actually have access to your latest employer, then

Chad Sowash (22:43.977)

Mm-hmm.

Etan Bernstein (23:00.972)

Wouldn't it be great if I went into LinkedIn and I saw every profile that it has certain percent of the credentials or information there is actually trusted verifiable data. So LinkedIn is a perfect participant in this kind of in this kind of ecosystem.

Chad Sowash (23:15.712)

Well, and you would know and correct me if I'm wrong. So as Joel's talking about clear, clear just says that you're a human being. That's that that's that's baseline, right? You're a human being. We know this is not a bot. That's awesome. But there's so much data that is actually in your profile that's not verified. you can go through that process of going to the universities, verifying that they actually went there and they that they've, you know, they've graduated or what have you.

going through some of the assessments, maybe even, you know, adding background checks and those types of things. I mean, all the way through. So I mean this is this is a much deeper profile, verified, validated profile than just clear at the top saying, hey, this is a human being. Okay. Okay.

Joel Cheesman (23:53.597)

Yeah.

Etan Bernstein (24:00.467)

Exactly. Exactly. And think think about a child b getting born today. You you would expect that in the digital age, everything I do, I have digital footprint, right? Why shouldn't I be have have that control of that digital footprint and be able to approve all these things? Why do I need to go through a background screen every time? Why do I need to go through an assessment every time? Why do I need to wait a few weeks for for my screening process to approve me so I can work in a bank or a healthcare system?

Chad Sowash (24:18.624)

Mm-hmm.

Etan Bernstein (24:24.834)

Right. All that friction is is unneeded. Again, when I'm a good player, the employers obviously want to rule out the bad players or the people are exagger exaggerating on their skills and capabilities and really get the best candidates. So everyone wins in our view, maybe except a few vendors. everyone wins when the world is based on trust.

Chad Sowash (24:45.216)

Yeah, agreed. So that would be beautiful. So what's your what's your biggest hurdle so far? I mean, because obviously I I would say probably this whole scenario, like you just said, many of these background check, let's say, vendors, they get Chad Sowash goes for, you know, three or four different jobs, and I've got to get three or four different background checks for different companies. In this case.

Joel Cheesman (24:45.553)

Wouldn't that be a happy world? If we all trusted each other. Good luck with that one.

Chad Sowash (25:15.016)

I get one because it sticks with me. So that's a that's a monetizing model kind of problem, let's say. How what's your big what's your biggest issue in trying to help these companies just say, look, we've got to get past this, you've got to change models, you have to evolve, because we need something like this. How what's your biggest obstacle right now?

Etan Bernstein (25:37.279)

You hit it on the head that this is a chicken, egg, and rooster problem. So it's a multi-sided network problem. And it's tough. The issue is adoption. You've both pointed that out very clearly. And you're absolutely right. The way to doubt deal with adoption is by by building ecosystems, small ecosystems, where you can actually reach a critical mass with with in a logical time frame, right? So find an industry and a geography where you have the issuers, the individuals, and the employers all working together.

So we do that, for instance, in healthcare in the US, specifically in a few of the states. And we're now doing that in staffing, in the staffing industry in the UK. Then some exercises on banking in the Netherlands. So how do you how do you build out a an ecosystem that creates enough weight, enough adoption, within a sh a relatively short amount of time so everyone gets value? And that's the challenge of building out these micro ecosystems, basically.

you mentioned, Chad, a question about the background screeners. The background screeners are very interesting because yes, you you're they could be cannibalizing their business, but what many of the background screeners have told us, and we have some of them at

the leading background screeners in the world as part of our membership is they don't actually make any money on verifying static past employment. Chasing down an education institution for a nurse who graduated in Manila, right, is just a pain. It costs more than it's worth. And paying with a work number, Equifax, $100 to get the records is not, no one's winning out of that.

They make their money by doing investigative, high quality work, now using AI for intelligent verification. All just checking another person again, a person's education or employment 20 years ago is just is not a value added step. And so even many of them are saying, I we wish we could get this clicked in a second and then move on to the more value added things of checking things that really put ri put people at risk.

Joel Cheesman (27:04.285)

Mm.

Joel Cheesman (27:30.097)

Yeah, did he say rooster?

Chad Sowash (27:32.33)

Ooh. yes.

Joel Cheesman (27:35.27)

Eaton, another maybe number two and the most timely issues today are the ghost jobs. And on one hand, you have companies, and I know this is an issue, they they post a job, they get the mass amounts of people apply, and then they close the job down, which is also another why reason why real people are getting screwed is they're not fast enough as the bots to apply to these jobs. But then on the other side of the the aisle you have companies that keep jobs posted in in infinitum. So

They're obviously getting mass applications. Like what help me s help me understand why companies would have ghost jobs when you have the problem of so many automated applicants.

Etan Bernstein (28:17.208)

Beats me. So so first of all, so so it in that just like with the candidates, there's bad there are really bad players and they're just people doing things that they think are good. So I I do think historically companies had regular open positions relevant in order to build talent pools. And that's not a bad idea, right? If I have an op right, if I have an evergreen position that I know that I'm constantly needing to hire for, it's and today with today's systems, it's great to build out a talent pool of relevant people and

Joel Cheesman (28:17.459)

Is it just bad business? It's dumb.

Chad Sowash (28:35.954)

Evergreen, yeah.

Etan Bernstein (28:46.552)

Tomorrow I may need to hire one of those and it's good to already have that. So that in in itself is not a bad, in my view, a bad a bad behavior. The it well right. Right.

Joel Cheesman (28:54.077)

If if they're real people, but if you're just flooding it with fake applicants, I I just

Etan Bernstein (29:00.3)

But but that by the way, today one of the bet one of the major issues on the internet is using fake jobs, good ghosting jobs, in order to get personal identifiable information. People are when they think that they're go they're being hired for a job, they're willing to give very, very sensitive information. And that's being used by very bad players. So that there's a real issue there of individuals now being worried about sh is this the real employer? Can I share my data with

Joel Cheesman (29:26.259)

Yeah. For sure.

Chad Sowash (29:27.992)

so when it comes when it comes down to all of this, who is the perfect other than a LinkedIn, we heard you talk about LinkedIn, who's the perfect partner for you to get involved with? Are they applicant tracking systems? Are they job boards? Are they, I mean, who who would actually help you get to that point of no return where everybody has to has to actually utilize the standard?

Etan Bernstein (29:53.827)

So anyone dealing with a lot of human capital data or HR data is a great candidate. So that's obviously the HR tech systems, right? The applicant tracking, though learning management systems, HR tech systems, student information systems. Anyone who's dealing with a lot of data is a great candidate. Either they're they're outputting data to the individual or they're receiving data to the individuals, right? Aggregate data. So the National Student Clearing House in the United States is an example, right? They hold

Chad Sowash (30:02.272)

Mm-hmm.

Etan Bernstein (30:22.366)

all this data of all the graduates in the U in the United States or a majority of them. So aggregators of trusted data, not just pl not just data like LinkedIn. Anyone who's dealing with data is a great candidate to help build out this ecosystem.

Joel Cheesman (30:38.099)

going back to ghost jobs a little bit, we're starting to see actual state governments try to tackle this problem. In your mind, is government play any role in policing all of these automated and company screening tools? Like does government have any role? I I can't imagine, but you live this every day.

Etan Bernstein (30:54.83)

I I I don't I don't know how government's always years behind chasing you know chasing the speed that these things are chang changing by the time most governments pick up on this, it'll be irrelevant, they'll be the next problem. You do see like in Europe with the AI regulations, that there are governments in the world who are attempting to reduce the the big problems, not necessarily just relating to recruiting or or HR, but that relate to trust and identity.

and use of AI, right? And I think that these the the this those laws need to impact the work in our space as well, not just be specific regulations for our world.

Chad Sowash (31:33.022)

Yeah. I mean, it would be a very progressive, very progressive and smart, I think, government that would actually come in and embed a standard. I mean, we have standards for plugs, for electricity, for things that I mean, for infrastructure, right? We have these things. This should be, could be basic infrastructure. But guess what, kids? It's gonna be it's gonna take a minute. It's gonna take a minute. It's complicated and it's orange.

Joel Cheesman (31:55.603)

It's complicated. It's complicated. It's complicated.

Chad Sowash (32:01.922)

okay, so you heard it from Eton, man. Stop hunting fraud, start embedding trust. That's Ethan Bernstein from the Velocity Networks. Eton, if somebody wants to connect with you, wants to maybe have a conversation, maybe they want to join the network, how do they get a hold of you?

Etan Bernstein (32:16.92)

Just check us out on www.velocity network dot foundation or search for velocity network foundation on any of your favorite LLMs or or search engines.

Chad Sowash (32:27.752)

There you go.

Joel Cheesman (32:28.509)

Chad, it figures you would schedule a guy named Eaton right around lunchtime. That is so you, man. And that's another one in the can, too. We out.

Chad Sowash (32:36.745)

Do what I can. We out.